Art and Life
The true professional
artist believes it is a calling, therefore, an assignment by the Creator. The
creative mind is triggered off into an irrepressible current of inspired mind.
The ultimate assignment is equipped with a workshop to create joy, appoint
laughter and to cheer and relax the spirit and the soul of man and
therapeutically propel peace into man’s existence. Life with art accommodates
and generates tolerance and also suppresses the fury of hatred.
Can you imagine life with barks and no laughter, pictures without
colour, or horrors with no humour? A masquerade world of individuality. It is
only the uncultured rich that swears to destroy entertainment when the artist
sweats to create entertainment in humour – comedy, graphics, fine arts,
sculpture, movies, performing arts, dance, drama, music all in fulfillment of
the assignment from the creator. These are too many to eradicate like vermin.
Let’s get together to make a good world better and sweeter. Keep the arts
alive.
Sad to say, it has been an uphill task for the assigned artists
in Nigeria. “He is ostracized by his family, outcast by society and cheapened
by the rich.”
Let this nation embrace him, so that together we can harvest the seed of talent
and endowment bestowed through him to Nigeria. Oil is small, Art is the Baba;
wells may dry, man is world forever. It has worked for
many other nations. Is it that Nigeria is too busy to relax?
The artist lives with the hope of
fulfillment yet without assurance of gratuity before his end. It hurts but he
cries in the rain so no one sees his tears. The Nigerian performing artist was
tolerated during the colonial era with a permit called the “Beggars’ license”. Since independence, he has been allowed to operate
free. Now the Arts as a profession is commercialized but not organized. Let the
government structure the Arts and we will have a giant industry.
The artist suspects a
conspiracy to kill the Arts, because there have been too many signs to make
suspect so. Yet the artist is determined to survive and fight to keep art alive
and be fulfilled in the assignment. Reggae and Hip-hop artists seem to brave
the unseen threats and painters’ long gray beards cannot afford the scissors or
shavers; if they cannot kill the industry they seem to be determined to erase
and blot out the artist from the nation with no salary, no gratuity, no
endowment fund, and no future.
Some of the pioneer artists have passed on to
the great beyond “unsung”. The ones alive have weakened will-power to create from
poor empty pockets. Nigeria arts lovers under the banner of the National
Council for Arts and Culture still managed to score a first in the arts circle
worldwide by creating a truly supportive umbrella for the Nigerian artist by
establishing the first enabling environment for the artist tagged the “Artists Village”, the first in Africa.
I have not known of any other through America and Europe. I only
knew and visited Hollywood in California, Elstree and Pine wood studios in
England. In my visits I checked out Broadway USA and west end in England. The
Artists Village at the National Theatre complex in Iganmu is truly a step in
the right direction towards the survival of Arts in Nigeria.
By Lari Williams
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